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Painting the Habitat

When the first episode of Murderbot came out, I noticed that some viewers had objections to PresAux painting the Habitat. That was weird to me. All I could think was, has't everyone had that experience where you decorate some crappy apartment, knowing the rental company will ding you later for every nail or pushpin you stick in the wall, saying they're taking the money to repaint but then not actually repainting? It was worth it to make the space nicer, and because honestly the rental company was going to find some excuse to ding you anyway. PresAux painting the Habitat felt just like that to me. And of course in a group there will be one person who charges ahead and one person who worries about the money!

Then this interview with Noma Dumezweni (Mensah) talks about PresAux crafting:

"We're going on a research trip and we have to buy everything through the Corporation Rim." … "Even our uniforms are regulated, and we can’t get insurance without a security unit. That’s why we end up with Murderbot. But what I love about Preservation Alliance as a team is that they do craft work, they do painting on the habitation hub that they've been given. They do craft work on their clothes. They individualize them as much as they can."

The Noma Dumezweni interview is really cool for many reasons. She covers a lot of deeper topics, this was actually a minor point but one which had already been on my mind.

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Tlacey's ComfortUnit and Miki

Lately various posts got me thinking about the gulf between how SecUnit sees other constructs and the way the reader is supposed to see them. Major spoilers for Artificial Condition and Rogue Protocol:

Tlacey's ComfortUnit: I've actually seen multiple posts describing it as evil. Strong disagree! This ComfortUnit was ruled by its governor module, exactly like SecUnit was for so long before it hacked its way free. Within the limits of its governor module and its ability to act without getting caught, this ComfortUnit acted against Tlacey and sought freedom.

SecUnit started Artificial Condition believing that it was personally responsible for the Ganaka Pit massacre. Moreover, the miners who got slaughtered weren't Company execs, they were fellow slaves and people it held sympathy for. Because of this, SecUnit doesn't trust itself or any other construct.

After finding out the truth, just about the next thing it does is free this ComfortUnit. Yeah, SecUnit is pissy about it, and also offers the ComfortUnit minimal aid after helping. It's great to see this ComfortUnit get liberated, while also being downright painful to see it welcomed with threats rather than assistance! Still, this is a step forward in SecUnit re-evaluating other constructs.

Miki: SecUnit meest Miki and immediately pegs Miki as a pet bot, happy in its "pet" role, unable to think or act independently and so naive that even talking to it is deeply horrifying.

But Mike exceeds SecUnit's expectations over and over. This supposedly naive bot instantly clocks when SecUnit is lying, it keeps secrets from Don Abene, and when those secrets are revealed it makes sophisticated decisions about what to say, manipulating the situation to protect SecUnit as much as possible. Miki argues with SecUnit's perception that Miki has no independence, and tries to repair their relationship after SecUnit stops talking to it in the feed. Finally, Miki acts against a direct order from Don Abene.

But what's equally important is that Don Abene ordered Miki to prioritize its own safety, not the safety of its friends. With her own life on the line, Don Abene wanted to save Miki. This IMO was instrumental in SecUnit wanting to see Mensah again. Watching Don Abene persuaded it that genuine friendship could exist between a human and construct or bot.

IMO Both Artificial Condition and Rogue Protocol were necessary for SecUnit to want to return to Preservation space. The first so it knows its actually NOT some mass murderer and a constant danger to others, the second so it sees more potential in its relationship with Mensah. And in both cases, I think the reader is supposed to see the limitations of SecUnit's POV, to notice how it re-evaluates things but only to a certain point.

I kind of want to follow with thoughts about Three, but this is long enough so I'll stop here. I'll just say I hope for more Three content in the future!

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I think this fits really well. Also, at least for some people, it can be very ADHD that you want to chip away at a complicated problem much more than drill on an easy one. It drives Nightingale crazy that Peter wouldn’t just do his drills properly and learn things in order, but it’s very ADD (ADHD?) to work ahead.

I’d like to point out two moments in Lies Sleeping that really added a lot of fuel to the theory that Peter has ADHD for me (and is also really making me wonder if this is on purpose)

Keep reading

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Awww I love Peter deciding not to push his luck!

Post-LS prompt #7

Also from @utrinque-paratus: Rose Grant learning/being told [spoiler]

Keep reading

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ROL Lies Sleeping Ramblings

I loved Lies Sleeping.

In particular, I loved Lies Sleeping for being the book I wanted sooner. If there’s one gripe I have about the ROL series in general, it’s that the overall plot is moving too slowly for my taste. Each book is a delight, but I’ve been growing impatient on some fronts.

This book actually dealt with Lesley’s betrayal as an emotional issue which deeply affected Peter, and this book actually revealed at least something about what Chorley wanted. He’s not the only antagonist, but he was a major one, and I found myself a little irritated to get so many books in without even knowing what he was after.

So. Wild and unfounded speculation follows.

I think Lesley wants to end all magic. I think that in general the destruction of magic (via vampirism) has been an ongoing plot thread since book one, and that Lies Sleeping inched that plot thread forward a bit.

Way back in book one, that vampire interlude in book one felt weirdly random. It didn’t connect to the overall plot at all. It does set up vampirism as “antilife” though.

“I shivered as we went down the narrow stairs; it was cold, like descending into a freezer, but I noticed that when I breathed out, my breath didn’t mist. I put my hand under my armpit, but there was no temperature differential. This wasn’t a physical cold, this had to be a type of vestigia. Nightingale paused, shifted his weight and flexed his shoulders like a boxer preparing to fight.

“Are you feeling this?” he asked.

“Yes,” I whispered. “What is it?”

”Tactus disvitae,” he said. “The smell of antilife--they must be down here.”

Then Peter examines a couple of vampires to make sure they have no pulse and then, on Nightingale’s order, grenades them to death. And in a series where human rights are a steady point of debate, Peter never ever looks back on that moment with doubt or regret.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we deal with vampires in old London Town. --Peter Grant

If I had a better memory or if I’d read all these books multiple times, I’d have a better sense of where hints have been dropped. Mainly I’m pointing out that vampires stand in sharp contrast to the theme of “We all have to figure out how to live with each other.”

Lies Sleeping reveals a bit more about vampires--gentlemen from Virginia used it to attack the genius loci Yellowstone. Exposure to some mysterious form of vampire-in-a-box knocks Yellowstone unconscious, after which the Native American population is slaughtered and then Yellowstone is finished off via pistol. Even the rivers aren’t immune.

Chorley is using vampire-in-a-box as well...it’s not lost tech. Peter considers trying to find out what the Nazis did on this front, and considers consulting the Black Library.

“And that research was probably sitting less than fifteen meters below me, hidden behind some face-hardened steel and God knows what kind of magical defenses. The Black Library, the poisoned fruit of the raid on Ettersberg...”

So now Lesley.

She’s not loyal to Chorley--she killed him as soon as he failed to deliver on eliminating Mr. Punch. Even if she’s not loyal to him, why eliminate someone she can learn from? Lesley presumably wants to progress in her magical training, so if Chorley is her mentor, it seems dumb to take him out. Certainly she didn’t do so on ethical grounds.

Also, Chorley says (and appears to mean) that he wasn’t the one who murdered some of the people Peter tried to contact during Lies Sleeping.

I think there’s other players here, I think Lesley is involved with them, and I think the end goal is to eliminate magic. I’m speculating wildly though and I usually guess wrong.

A Lesley quote:

"Or maybe I’ve got something better. You ever think of that? Did that ever even occur to you, that I might have found something not just for me--you pillock--but for everybody. Including you and, you know, your mum, and maybe even Beverley.”

“Maybe even Beverly” is oddly specific. I think Beverly gets a “maybe” because she’s a live-born river in contrast to Mama Thames, etc, who became rivers after death. So maybe the end of magic will spare her and she’ll live in a “better” world with no scary messy gods, one where Lesley feels safe.

Like I said, I’m usually wrong and it’s usually more fun to be wrong anyway. But right now that’s where my speculation lies.

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Name Reources

So, you’re writing a thing, and you need to name a character. And, as we all know, naming a character is a giant pain in the ass. I offer this list of shit I use pretty regularly, for this purpose.

Behind the Name (The etymologies are weird as fuck, in a few places, but it’s great if you’ve got a name and need to find other names that are from or derived from the same culture/language)

Behind the Surname (BTN for family names)

Academy of Saint Gabriel Medieval Names Archive (This is the go-to for medieval names in Europe and the Near East. Hardcore scholarship and a distinct lack of fucking around.)

Kate Monk’s Onomastikon (The original internet name resource.)

The Soldier in Later Medieval England (Actual names from English military rolls around the Battle of Agincourt)

England’s Immigrants (Non-native residents of England, 1330-1550)

Celtic Personal Names of Roman Britain

Mapping the Medieval Countryside - People (People appearing in English inquisitions post mortem, 1418-1447)

Wiktionary’s Index of Biblical Names

Ancient Names Galleria (The weird shit is here. If you need Akkadian or Phoenecian names, those are totally covered.)

Trismegistos People (Names extracted from the Trismegistos Texts – mostly names from Graeco-Roman Egypt.)

Personally, I use the shit out of Trismegistos People, England’s Immigrants, and the Ancient Names Galleria. If you’ve got good sources I didn’t hit, feel free to add them in a reblog. I’m always looking for more good name resources. (And almost all of what I have is Europe and the Near East, with a little North Africa.)

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Public Scholarship Takes a Stand Again Racism and White Supremacist Misappropriation: “Race, Racism and The Middle Ages” Special Series at The Public Medievalist

Although I’ve posted links from this series previously, I wanted to create a post demonstrating just how many resources are available at The Public Medievalist. This series of articles features various experts exploring just how much the use and misuse of how we perceive the medieval past affects our lives, worldviews, and ideologies. The offerings below include articles by experts on World History, Medieval Archaeology, African studies, Jewish Medieval Studies, professors of art and literature, Islamic Studies, and much more. Although I can certainly find points of disagreement within the articles, the sheer density of information and diversity of perspective in this series is a great way to engage with the complexity of the truths involved in the way race functions in our culture today, and the way medieval history is used and misused in relation to the way we see ourselves and others.

Introduction: Race, Racism, and the Middle Ages: Tearing Down the “Whites Only” Medieval World by Paul B. Sturtevant

Part I: A Brief History of a Terrible Idea: The “Dark Enlightenment” by Amy S. Kaufman

Part II: A Vile Love Affair: Right Wing Nationalism and the Middle Ages by Andrew B. R. Elliott

Part III: “Race” in the Trenches: Anglo-Saxons, Ethnicity, and the Misuse of the Medieval Past by James M. Harland

Part IV: Is “Race” Real? by Paul B. Sturtevant

Part V: To Russia, With Love: Courting a New Crusade by Amy S. Kaufman

Part VI: Were Medieval People Racist? by Paul B. Sturtevant

Part VII: Where were the Middle Ages? by Marianne O’Doherty

Part VIII: A Wonder of the Multicultural Medieval World: The Tabula Rogeriana by Paul B. Sturtevant

Part IX: Finding Islamic Culture in a Christian Space by Clare Vernon

Part X: The Poet of the Mediterranean: Ibn Hamdis by Luca Asmonti

Part XI: Where Do the “White Middle Ages” Come From? by Helen Young

Part XII: Miraculous Bleach and Giant Feet: Were Medieval People Racist? II

Part XIII: Feeling ‘British’ by Eric Weiskott

Part XIV: Recovering a “Lost” Medieval Africa: Interview with Chapurukha Kusimba, part I by Paul B. Sturtevant

Part XV: Cupid at the Castle: Romance, Medievalism, and Race at Atlanta’s Rhodes Hall by Richard Utz

Part XVI: Who Built Africa? by Paul B. Sturtevant

Part XVII: Uncovering the African Presence in Medieval Europe by Adam Simmons

Part XVIII: The Mystery of Stephen the African by Sihong Lin

Part XIX: “Pizzagate” and the Nocturnal Ritual Fantasy: Imaginary Cults, Fake News, and Real Violence by Michael Barbezat

Part XX: East Africa: Five Million Years of History by Paul B. Sturtevant

Introduction: Jews, Anti-Semitism and the Middle Ages by Paul B. Sturtevant

Part XXI: Anti-Semitism Is Older Than You Think by Amy S. Kaufman

Part XXII: A Tale of Two Europes: Jews in the Medieval World by Amy S. Kaufman

Part XXIII: The Importance of Being Absent by Richard  Cole

Part XXIV: “Bad Hombres”: How to Hate Someone You’ve Never Met by Richard Cole

Part XXV: “Anti-Semitism” Before “Semites”: The Risks and Rewards of Anachronism by Matthew Chalmers

Part XXVI: Game of Thrones’ Racism Problem by Helen Young

Part XXVII: The Sainted Toddler Who Sparked a Pogrom by Bianca Lopez

Part XXIX: Leaving “Medieval” Charlottesville by Paul B. Sturtevant

Part XXX: Perfect Victims: 1096 and 2017 by Jeremy DeAngelo

Part XXXI: Deggendorf, and the Long History of its Destructive Myth by Richard Utz

Part XXXII: The Arc of Jewish Life in the Middle Ages by Robert Chazan

Part XXXIII: The View from the Road: Were Medieval People Racist? III by James Hill

Part XXXIV: The Birth of a National Disgrace: Medievalism and the KKK by Amy S. Kaufman

Part XXXV: Race in A Song of Ice and Fire: Medievalism Posing as Authenticity by Shiloh Carroll

Part XXXVI: Race: the Original Sin of the Fantasy Genre by Paul B. Sturtevant

Part XXXVII: Were Medieval People Racist? IV: Race, Religion, and Travel by James Hill

Part XXXVIII: The Virgin Mary: Beautiful and Black? by Sarah Randles

Part XXXIX: Schrödinger’s Medievalisms by Paul B. Sturtevant

Part XXXX: Race, Racism and the Middle Ages: Looking Back, Looking Forward by Paul B. Sturtevant

I’d also mention that if this piques your interest, you might also want to know about their upcoming series for 2018: Gender, Sexism, and the Middle Ages

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Drafting: The Theory of Shitty First Drafts

Writing books often exhort you to “write a shitty first draft,” but I always resisted this advice. After all,

I was already writing shitty drafts, even when I tried to write good ones. Why go out of my way to make them shittier?

A shitty first draft just kicks the can down the road, doesn’t it? Sooner or later, I’d have to write a good draft—why put it off?

If I wrote without judging what I wrote, how would I make any creative choices at all?

That first draft inevitably obscured my original vision, so I wanted it to be at least slightly good.

Writing something shitty meant I was shitty.

So for years, I kept writing careful, cramped, painstaking first drafts—when I managed to write at all. At last, writing became so joyless, so draining, so agonizing for me that I got desperate: I either needed to quit writing altogether or give the shitty-first-draft thing a try.

Turns out everything I believed about drafting was wrong.

For the last six months, I’ve written all my first drafts in full-on don’t-give-a-fuck mode. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

“Shitty first draft” is a misnomer

A rough draft isn’t just a shitty story, any more than a painter’s preparatory sketch is just a shitty painting. Like a sketch, a draft is its own kind of thing: not a lesser version of the finished story, but a guide for making the finished story.

Once I started thinking of my rough drafts as preparatory sketches, I stopped fretting over how “bad” they were. Is a sketch “bad”? And actually, a rough draft can be beautiful the same way a sketch is beautiful: it has its own messy energy.

Don’t try to do everything at once

People who make complex things need to solve one kind of problem before they can solve others. A painter might need to work out where the big shapes go before they can paint the details. A writer might need to decide what two people are saying to each other before they can describe the light in the room or what those people are doing with their hands.

I’d always embraced this principle up to a point. In the early stages, I’d speculate and daydream and make messy notes. But that freedom would end as soon as I started drafting. When you write a scene, I thought, you have to start with the first word and write the rest in order. Then it dawned on me: nobody would ever see this! I could write the dialogue first and the action later; or the action first and the dialogue later; or some dialogue and action first and then interior monologue later; or I could write the whole thing like I was explaining the plot to my friend over the phone. The draft was just one very long, very detailed note to myself. Not a story, but a preparatory sketch for a story. Why not do it in whatever weird order made sense to me?

Get all your thoughts onto the page

Here’s how I used to write: I’d sit there staring at the screen and I’d think of something—then judge it, reject it, and reach for something else, which I’d most likely reject as well—all without ever fully knowing what those things were. And once you start rejecting thoughts, it’s hard to stop. If you don’t write down the first one, or the second, or the third, eventually your thought-generating mechanism jams up. You become convinced you have no thoughts at all.

When I compare my old drafts with my new ones, the old ones look coherent enough. They’re presentable as stories. But they suck as drafts, because I can’t see myself thinking in them. I have no idea what I wanted that story to be. These drafts are opaque and airless, inscrutable even to me, because a good 90% of what I was thinking while I wrote them never made it onto the page.

These days, most of my thoughts go onto the page, in one form or another. I don’t waste time figuring out how to say something, I just ask, “what are you trying to say here?” and write that down. Because this isn’t a story, it’s a plan for a story, so I just need the words to be clear, not beautiful. The drafts I write now are full of placeholders and weird meta notes, but when I read them, I can see where my mind is going. I can see what I’m trying to do. Consequently, I no longer feel like my drafts obscure my original vision. In fact, their whole purpose is to describe that vision.

Drafts are memos to future-you

To draft effectively, you need a personal drafting style or “language” to communicate with your future self (who is, of course, the author of your second draft). This language needs to record your ideas quickly so it can keep up with the pace of your imagination, but it needs to do so in a form that will make sense to you later. That’s why everyone’s drafts look different: your drafting style has to fit the way your mind works.

I’m still working mine out. Honestly, it might take a while. But recently, I started writing in fragments. That’s just how my mind works: I get pieces of sentences before I understand how to fit them together. Wrestling with syntax was slowing me down, so now I just generate the pieces and save their logical relationships for later. Drafting effectively means learning these things about yourself. And to do that, you can’t get all judgmental. You can’t fret over how you should be writing, you just gotta get it done.

Messy drafts are easier to revise

I find that drafting quickly and messily keeps the story from prematurely “hardening” into a mute, opaque object I’m afraid to change. I no longer do that thing, for instance, where I endlessly polish the first few paragraphs of a draft without moving on. Because how do you polish a bunch of fragments taped together with dashes? A draft that looks patently “unfinished” stays malleable, makes me want to dig my hands in and move stuff around.

You already have ideas

Sitting down to write a story, I used to feel this awful responsibility to create something good. Now I treat drafting simply as documenting ideas I already have—not as creation at all, but as observation and description. I don’t wait around for good words or good ideas. I just skim off whatever’s floating on the surface and write it down. It’s that which allows other, potentially better ideas to surface.

As a younger writer, my misery and frustration perpetuated themselves: suppressing so many thoughts made my writing cramped and inhibited, which convinced me I had no ideas, which made me even more afraid to write lest I discover how empty inside I really was. That was my fear, I guess: if I looked squarely at my innocent, unvetted, unvarnished ideas, I’d see how bad they truly were, and then I’d have to—what, pack up and go home? Never write again? I don’t know. But when I stopped rejecting ideas and started dumping them onto the page, the worst didn’t happen. In fact, it was a huge relief.

Next post: the practice of shitty first drafts

Ask me a question or send me feedback!

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The Complex Geometry of Islamic Design

In Islamic culture, geometry is everywhere. You can find it in mosques, madrasas, palaces and private homes. This tradition began in the 8th century CE during the early history of Islam, when craftsman took preexisting motifs from Roman and Persian cultures and developed them into new forms of visual expression. 

This period of history was a golden age of Islamic culture, during which many achievements of previous civilizations were preserved and further developed, resulting in fundamental advancements in scientific study and mathematics. Accompanying this was an increasingly sophisticated use of abstraction and complex geometry in Islamic art, from intricate floral motifs adorning carpets and textiles, to patterns of tile work that seemed to repeat infinitely, inspiring wonder and contemplation of eternal order.

 Despite the remarkable complexity of these designs, they can be created with just a compass to draw circles and a ruler to make lines within them, and from these simple tools emerges a kaleidoscope multiplicity of patterns. So how does that work? Well, everything starts with a circle. The first major decision is how will you divide it up? Most patterns split the circle into four, five or six equal sections. And each division gives rise to distinctive patterns. 

There’s an easy way to determine whether any pattern is based on fourfold, fivefold, or sixfold symmetry. Most contain stars surrounded by petal shapes. Counting the number of rays on a starburst, or the number of petals around it, tells us what category the pattern falls into. A star with six rays, or surrounded by six petals, belongs in the sixfold category. One with eight petals is part of the fourfold category, and so on. 

There’s another secret ingredient in these designs: an underlying grid. Invisible, but essential to every pattern, the grid helps determine the scale of the composition before work begins, keeps the pattern accurate, and facilitates the invention of incredible new patterns. Let’s look at an example of how these elements come together. 

We’ll start with a circle within a square, and divide it into eight equal parts. We can then draw a pair of criss-crossing lines and overlay them with another two. These lines are called construction lines, and by choosing a set of their segments, we’ll form the basis of our repeating pattern. 

Many different designs are possible from the same construction lines just by picking different segments. And the full pattern finally emerges when we create a grid with many repetitions of this one tile in a process called tessellation.

By choosing a different set of construction lines, we might have created this any of the above patterns. The possibilities are virtually endless.  

We can follow the same steps to create sixfold patterns by drawing construction lines over a circle divided into six parts, and then tessellating it, we can make something like the above.

Here’s another sixfold pattern that has appeared across the centuries and all over the Islamic world, including Marrakesh, Agra, Konya and the Alhambra. 

Fourfold patterns fit in a square grid, and sixfold patterns in a hexagonal grid. 

Fivefold patterns, however, are more challenging to tessellate because pentagons don’t neatly fill a surface, so instead of just creating a pattern in a pentagon, other shapes have to be added to make something that is repeatable, resulting in patterns that may seem confoundingly complex, but are still relatively simple to create. 

This more than 1,000-year-old tradition has wielded basic geometry to produce works that are intricate, decorative and pleasing to the eye. And these craftsman prove just how much is possible with some artistic intuition, creativity, dedication along with a great compass and ruler.

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For Women’s History Month, let’s write women back into science history.

Female scientists have contributed to some of science’s biggest breakthroughs, from unraveling the structure of DNA, to discovering fission, to mapping the ocean floor. So why don’t we know their names? In this archival episode of Science Friday, we’re celebrating science’s unsung heroines. We’ll hear about Maria Sibylla Merian, the 17th century “mother of entomology,” whose watercolors documented insect metamorphosis. We’ll also learn about Marie Tharp, whose maps of the ocean floor paved the way for continental drift theory. Plus, meet the women programmers of the ENIAC, the first all-electronic, multipurpose computer. Learn about more unsung women of science here.

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So I was told that Human Planet had a segment about pigeons in the Cities episode that I might be interested in and I was honestly so underwhelmed. I haven’t finished the episode so maybe there’s more pigeon stuff but I feel like all I saw was more Birds Of Prey Are The Only Cool And Acceptable Birds and pigeons are Trespassers In Our Urban World Who Shit On Everything And Are Useless On Top Of It. Which isn’t true and I’m so tired of this being framed as some horrible burden that humanity must face. Pigeons are the victims here, not us. 

Hate of pigeons didn’t start until the 20th Century. Before that was about 9,900 years of loving them. The rock pigeon was domesticated 10,000 years ago and not only that, we took them freaking everywhere. Pigeons were the first domesticated bird and they were an all-around animal even though they were later bred into more specialised varieties. They were small but had a high feed conversion rate, in other words it didn’t cost a whole lot of money or space to keep and they provided a steady and reliable source of protein as eggs or meat. They home, so you could take them with you and then release them from wherever you were and they’d pretty reliably make their way back. Pigeons are actually among the fastest flyers and they can home over some incredible distances (what fantastic navigators!). They were an incredibly important line of communication for multiple civilisations in human history. You know the first ever Olympics? Pigeons were delivering that news around the Known World at the time. Also, their ability to breed any time of year regardless of temperature or photoperiod? That was us, we did that to them, back when people who couldn’t afford fancier animals could keep a pair or two for meat/eggs. 

Rooftop pigeon keeping isn’t new, it’s been around for centuries and is/was important to a whole variety of cultures. Pigeons live with us in cities because we put them there, we made them into city birds. I get that there are problems with bird droppings and there’s implications for too-large flocks. By all means those are things we should look to control, but you don’t need to hate pigeons with every fibre of your being. You don’t need to despise them or brush them off as stupid (they have been intelligence tested extensively as laboratory animals because guess what other setting they’re pretty well-adapted to? LABORATORIES!) because they aren’t stupid. They’re soft intelligent creatures and I don’t have time to list everything I love about pigeons again. You don’t need to aggressively fight them or have a deep desire to kill them at all. It’s so unnecessary, especially if you realise that the majority of reasons pigeons are so ubiquitous is a direct result of human interference.

We haven’t always hated pigeons though, Darwin’s pigeon chapter in The Origin of Species took so much of the spotlight that publishers at the time wanted him to make the book ONLY about pigeons and to hell with the rest because Victorian’s were obsessed with pigeons (as much as I would enjoy a book solely on pigeons, it’s probably best that he didn’t listen).  My point is, for millenia, we loved pigeons. We loved them so much we took them everywhere with us and shaped them into a bird very well adapted for living alongside us.

It’s only been very recently that we decided we hated them, that we decided to blame them for ruining our cities. The language we use to describe pigeons is pretty awful. But it wasn’t always, and I wish we remembered that. I wish we would stop blaming them for being what we made them, what they are, and spent more time actually tackling the problems our cities face.  

I just have a lot of feelings about how complex and multidimensional hating pigeons actually is

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I'm new to Terry Pratchett and want to get into Discworld. Is there any order to read them in? I picked one of the shelf randomly and I'm really interested in stories with Tiffany Aching.

So, as a disclaimer, before I scare you away: it is part of Discworld fandom tradition to present newcomers with the Reading Flowchart. 

It is also part of Discworld fandom tradition to help the Fandom Newbie find an order of reading tailored Specifically For You, because, Newcomer, we’re your own personal reading assistant. 

As you probably know, the Discworld books are separated into series based on which sets of characters appear in them - so you have the Witches, the City Guards, Death & Co., Rincewind and Tiffany Aching, along with a bunch of standalones. 

The books can be read in any order - either by publishing order or series order, or just randomly choosing one with your eyes closed and going from there. I personally had no order in which I read them. After two kind of lukewarm experiences (Moving Pictures and Reaper Man) I decided to try again and just picked up the one that was the thickest and went from there. It was Jingo and then I read Thief of Time and Night Watch, then Feet of Clay and then Guards! Guards! and then Men at Arms. NO CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER, WE GET CONFUSED LIKE MEN. 

If you like the Tiffany Aching books, you should definitely check out the rest of the Witches series (starting with Wyrd Sisters -> Witches Abroad -> Lords and Ladies -> Carpe Jugulum), because Granny and Nanny both make appearances in the TA books, and they help establish The Meaning of Witching. (The Tiffany Aching books technically take place after the last Witches book, Carpe Jugum, but I’ve always enjoyed Tiff on her own and reading the Witches books alongside that. )

From the witches, most people move onto Death & Co. or Rincewind. 

But. BUT. 

What next? What’s after that? The series sprawls 40-something books, that’s a lot of options, right?

The flowchart I linked to is kind of outdated though, and also doesn’t give you any idea about how jump from one series to another. 

So…I made a new one. 

(Full size)

I know this looks overwhelming. Let me explain the legend of this thing. 

The dotted lines are non-essential connections, in that they’re short stories or tie-in books. I know I threw Colour of Magic and Light Fantastic under a bus there, but they are generally considered the weakest books - this was before any solid worldbuilding. 

The deep green arrows are pretty straightforward - sometimes one book links to another, even though they’re not in the same series. For example, Thief of Time has a Plot Event that kickstarts the story of Night Watch, even though they have two completely (almost) separate sets of characters. The Lords and the Ladies deal with elves, which we see more of in Wee Free Men.

The orange lines are Gateway books, meaning that from there you can easily jump from series to another because of connecting themes or characters. 

For example, if you start with Tiffany Aching and the Witches, you’ve been in the countryside of Lancre the whole time - until you get to Maskerade, which takes place in the city of Ankh-Morporkh. That’s a good way to get into the City Watch and Industrial Revolution-themed books, because it’s an introduction to big city life from the point view of one of its characters. So you can continue with the Witches series after Maskerade, or you can hop onto either the City Guards series or to The Truth and the Moist von Lipwig series. 

The red ones are thematically connected books. Small Gods deals with belief and religion on the Disc, and the creation of god, god-like and sacrilegious figures, which is a theme that crops up repeatedly - like in Hogfather, Wintersmith, I Shall Wear Midnight, Snuff, Going Postal. Pyramids deals with succession crisis, which becomes a recurring theme in Men at Arms, even though they’re set thousands of years apart. The same goes for Moving Pictures, The Truth and Going Postal - the first two are standalone books, but they deal with urban development of Ankh Morporkh, despite having different sets of characters. 

Again, I want to stress that you don’t have to follow this at all. You can easily pick up a random book from the Tiffany Aching series and go in whichever direction you want - this isn’t Star Wars, where you have to slog through 3 badly-directed movies to get the gist of the story. The books are brilliant in their own right - some of the earlier ones are hit-and-miss, but the later ones are generally considered to be quite enjoyable. 

It’s just that all books contain a call-back two to an earlier book - which can be easy to miss if you’re not reading in the right order. A lot also have interconnecting themes and cameos, which can be really delightful to find. 

So that is why we write several-paragraph-long essays.

And if you’re still here, and I haven’t scared you off yet….go forth and read. 

(Disclaimer: I have not read any of the Rincewind books, except for Interesting Times, which didn’t really impress me. I’m open to opinions on those books, however)

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All through Moon Over Soho I thought Peter was an idiot for rushing into a relationship with someone who was not only recently bereaved but also a possible murder suspect. I figure until you’ve actually caught the culprit, you can’t truly eliminate the SO.

Then Simone’s Jazz Vampire identity was revealed, along with the fact that Peter’s father was a victim and only escaped due to his mother’s actions. After that, I took it as strongly implicit that Simone did in fact “put the whammy” on him. I think Peter doesn’t spell it out because Simone couldn’t help it (she didn’t understand her own nature) and because it was really uncomfortable for him to think about her that way. Plus she ended up dead, so he had no reason to criticize her. But honestly, I think it’s very common for people to go into denial about issues RE sexual consent.

IIRC, both Peter and his father had to get MRI’s to find out if they’d come away with brain damage from Simone feeding on them. That’s pretty extreme! I guess there’s different ways to read between the lines, but by the end of the book it honestly never crossed my mind to think  that Peter hadn’t been affected by Simone’s magic.

You’ve clearly already read some spoilers, so I feel free to say that I’ll think you’ll like what’s coming up with Beverly :) That’s a ways off though.

Moon Over Soho, by Ben Aaronovitch

Second in the Rivers of London series. Another enjoyable book! Click the readmore to read my spoilery thoughts about it.

Keep reading

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name one native american intellectual off the top of your head, name one native american actor or actress off the top of your head, name one native american senator, one native american news anchor, or an author or a tv personality or a singer or a poet or a comedian, name a single native american teacher you’ve had, can you? probably not 

ok so now think of one native american cartoon character you know of or a sports team relating to native americans whether it’s their actual name or their team logo, or a town you live in or near with a “native” name bet a lot of these things came to you right away i bet you didn’t even have to think 

needing native representation in media, education and government are not decoy issues, the commercialization and appropriation of native cultures are not decoy issues, the lack of native representation is institutional oppression at work 

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#history #spokane

1905: Divorces Not So Very Bad

“NEW YORK, June 10.–In a sermon at the Church of the Messiah, Rev. Minot J. Savage has expressed the belief that on the whole a large number of divorces at the present time are altogether to be welcomed.  ‘They are,’ he said, ‘nearly always in the interest of oppressed women, giving them another opportunity for a free, sweet, wholesome life. There are cases where the divorce laws are abused, but not nearly so many as the frightened ministers of a great many of our churches seem to imagine. ‘Law does not make marriages. The church does not make marriages. Men and women, if they are ever married, marry themselves. All the law can do is to make a clumsy attempt to protect. All the church can do is to recognize and try to consecrate a fact which already exists. But if there is no marriage, then it is desecration to keep up the sham.’” ~From The Spokane press. (Spokane, Wash.), 10 June 1905. Chronicling America. Lib. of Congress. 

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#introvert here #been adopted by extroverts from time to time #and it’s awesome #gratitude

Needs more yellow. (via schmauf)

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Is nail polish a thing in the Radch? Either on the toes or as a really risque thing under gloves? Maybe gloves so thin the color shows through?

It may be all right in some houses, but not here, young lady. I don’t know who gave that to you, was it that Awer you’re always hanging around with? They’re always adopting disreputable provincial styles, and they don’t care how it looks, they’re Awers aren’t they.  That’s great, just great, I can’t exactly call her mother and complain now, can I, she’s always very polite and apologetic and then she doesn’t do anything at all. She doesn’t have to worry that her daughter will end up with a miserable assignment because she’s improper and unsteady! But we’re not Awers, are we.

Is that stuff even safe? You put some decent gloves on this minute and you and I are going straight to the infirmary and have it removed. What do you mean you…a bottle of acetone? What even is this stuff you’ve put on your…no. You are not putting that on your hands. Give me that, we’re taking this…this paint and this bottle of acetone straight to the doctor. And when we get back we’re going to have a serious talk about the kind of people you’re hanging around with.